A touch sensor is attached, for example, to a door such as a back door of an automatic pivoting type or a side door of an automatic sliding type of a vehicle. The touch sensor senses a finger, or the like, caught between the door and a body of the vehicle.
The touch sensor is attached to the door through a sensor protector for accommodating the touch sensor. The sensor protector includes an attaching base portion in which a core metal is embedded and a hollow portion for accommodating the touch sensor. A cross-sectional shape of the attaching base portion is an approximate U-shape. The hollow portion is formed as a unit with the attaching base portion. The sensor protector is attached to a flange member protruding from the door through a hook portion of the attaching base portion.
The touch sensor described above is normally provided along an edge of the door. However, the core material embedded in the sensor protector for accommodating the touch sensor hinders the sensor protector to be bent. Therefore, it tends to be difficult to provide the touch sensor along the edge of the door at a corner portion of the door. As a result, sensing accuracy of the touch sensor tends to degrade at the corner portion of the door.
Further, if the sensor protector is forcibly bent to provide the touch sensor along the corner portion of the door, there is a concern that the core material of the sensor protector may break. As a result, a broken part of the core material of the sensor protector will be affected by rust, or the like. Therefore, appearance of the sensor protector degrades.
For example, a sensor protector described in JP2004-176426A is known. The sensor protector includes a pressing member provided at a section corresponding to an angular section of a tail gate for pressing a touch sensor. Accordingly, though the touch sensor is not provided along an edge of the tail gate at the angular section, detection accuracy of the touch sensor at the angular section of the tail gate can be ensured by the pressing member. However, the sensor protector needs a separate pressing member.
A need thus exists for a sensor protector which is not susceptible to the drawback mentioned above.